Israel Film Festival: On the Black Bus,women must ride in the back

For some it might mean not blowing your own horn, no matter how clever you might be, how attractive you think you are, or how much you have given to charity.

For others it might mean hiding your hair, or even your face.

For some ultra-orthodox Jews (Haredim) in Israel, modesty means (among many other things) that on some Mehadrin bus routes, women sit (or often stand) in the back third of the bus, and men get the front.

That way, men can avoid even looking at the women, much less brushing against them if the driver hits the brakes unexpectedly.

Even if the men’s section is all but empty, the standing women still can’t use it. The women have to get off and on by the back door, too.

If they don’t obey these rules, things can and do get quite ugly, as the film shows all too clearly.

A man, sputtering with rage says, “This is a boundary. Anyone who crosses it will be bitten by a snake!” and accuses an unco-operative woman of being a “shiksa” – not Jewish.

These are public buses, they aren’t owned by the Haredim, so the many people who don’t hold the same beliefs are very offended by the practice and say it should not be allowed. It’s hard not to think about Rosa Parks and the American civil rights struggle. You can read more about the bus controversy in this article from the Jerusalem Post.

But the buses are just a handy starting point for filmmaker Arat Yuta Zuria.

Her real subject is the limitations placed on the lives of Haredi girls and women.

They go to same-sex schools and are married off at an early age.

One young woman tells the camera she was engaged before she was 16, and at 17 she was already married and pregnant. Another woman, who did not want to marry, was taken from psychiatrist to psychiatrist by her parents. From her parents’ point of view, if she didn’t want to marry, she must mentally ill.

When she refused the pills the doctors gave her, she was injected with drugs against her will. Eventually she lost the strength to fight and agreed to marry. A rabbi’s son, a former hardliner himself, explains that life is becoming more and more restricted in Haredi communities as rabbis compete to see who can be the most conservative and attract the most followers. He says some of those rabbis would put women in a cage if they could, but they need women to serve them. There are rules and codes of conduct to govern every possible aspect of life. These rules are described to us by several people, among them the blogger Sara and law student Shulamit, who left the Haredi community when they could no longer abide by all those rules.

(While the English title of the film is Black Bus, the Hebrew title of the movie, Soreret, is translated as “rebellious.”)

While they obviously appreciate their freedom, it comes at a very high price – estrangement from their families.

Black Bus (Soreret) directed by Arat Yuta Zuria, is in Hebrew with English subtitles.

It’s 76 minutes long. ’

Black Bus will be shown Wednesday, May 18, at 4:30, in Room H110 of Concordia University, 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. W., as part of the Israel Film Festival.

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